The relationship between the expression of certain genes and the subsequent functional activities of a cell is a central question in cell biology. The detection of transcribed genes often uses reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). RT-PCR is a variant of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a laboratory technique commonly used in molecular biology to generate many copies of a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence, a process termed “amplification.” In RT-PCR, a ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand is first reverse transcribed into its DNA complement (complementary DNA, or cDNA) using the enzyme reverse transcriptase. The resulting cDNA is subsequently amplified using traditional PCR. RT-PCR utilizes a pair of primers, which are complementary to a defined sequence on each of the two strands of the cDNA. These primers are then extended by a DNA polymerase and a copy of the strand is made after each PCR cycle, leading to exponential amplification.